Well, fuck me
by Kindle-the-Stars
Summary: Another Cartson AU for the AU week on Tumblr - today's theme being 'missed the same flight and now have to drive half way across the country together' Rated M for language


Peggy had missed her flight by scant minutes and it was all Howard's fault; he had lost some of his inventions due to a break in and one of them had surfaced on the black market of New York. Knowing that she was passing through there, he had practically begged her to look into it, never mind that she was meant to be leaving for a job interview in LA that afternoon.

The airport was in chaos; numerous flights had been delayed or cancelled due to the bad weather but it was just her luck that the Chicago flight was leaving on time – if it had been delayed she would have made it.

She was cajoling the flight attendant to open the gate for her, wondering if it was worth pulling out her MI6 badge, when a harassed man ran towards them – he practically shoved Peggy to one side, waving his ticket in the poor attendants face. "Let me on," he demanded, rudely interrupting.

The flight attendant blinked several times. "I'm sorry, sir, but this lady -"

"She can wait," the man said harshly. He was tall, taller than her even in her heels, and had dark blond hair that was neatly cut. He was wearing an expensive looking grey suit and had a small wheeled case that he had dragged behind him.

" _She_ does not appreciate being interrupted, thank you," Peggy snapped back, the acid in her voice instantly silencing the man.

The flight attendant looked between them. "I'm sorry, but the Captain has already closed the doors -"

The blond man swore viciously under his breath and stormed off, dragging his case behind him.

Peggy remained by the desk. "Please," she tried, knowing that it was likely futile and that even her badge would do little good now. "Is there anything you can do?"

"I'm sorry, but it's out of my hands," was the genuinely regretful reply. "With the delays that we've had today there is only a limited slot for the plane to take off -"

"I understand," Peggy cut off, realising that there was nothing to be done.

Walking away from the desk and dragging her own case behind her, she pulled out her phone. "JARVIS, are you up?" she said to the screen.

" _For you, Miss Carter, always_ ," the British voice said from the phone – the system was top of the line, designed by Howard, and not even available to the public yet.

"Reserve me a rental," she ordered the system, knowing that she had to get to Chicago if she wanted to make her connection to LA – thankfully, she had been due for a several hour lay-over in Chicago, meaning that she might just make it in time.

" _Shall I charge it to Mr Stark's account?_ " the system asked politely.

Peggy laughed as she headed down towards the car rental stand, though there was little humour in it. "Considering that he is the reason I am late, why not?"

* * *

This was _not_ Jack's day.

First the Stark weapon that he had been tasked with going in to collect had vanished, with those trying to fence it clearly up in arms and disorientated which implied a _goddamn_ third party interested in the weapons; then the SSR's plane had been grounded at the hanger due to a technical fault. Determined to make it back to LA for his Gam-Gam's 90th birthday, he had bought an obscenely expensive last minute flight with a connection in Chicago, but the chaos in the airport had caused him to miss his flight by minutes.

And now there were no rental cars left.

"What do you mean, you've got no cars left?" he snapped, staring at the boy behind the counter in horror.

"I'm sorry, sir," he stuttered, his voice scarcely having broken. "But with the delayed flights people are driving to their destinations -"

"Which is exactly what _I_ want to do – there's a damn car right _there_!" he said, pointing to the sleek black sedan parked on the curb.

"That's the last one and it has already been reserved -"

"Under the name Margaret Carter, I believe," a crisp, feminine British voice said from behind him. It was her, the woman that had been at the gate – curvy little thing, with dark eyes, dark hair and British to boot. If she didn't sound so smug he would have been digging the accent.

"Yes ma'am, here is your paperwork," the boy said, sliding a form over the counter towards her before glancing at Jack once more. "I'm sorry, sir, but there is nothing that I can do."

Jack, however, was staring at the woman – evidently she'd had the same idea he'd had in getting a rental to drive to Chicago, but had been clever enough to phone ahead from the gate. "You were on the Chicago flight," he said to her, making a concerted effort to calm his voice from the angry tone he'd spoken in a moment ago.

"I was meant to be, yes," she confirmed, the biro flying over the form as she efficiently filled it out without looking at him.

"It's an eleven hour drive to Chicago," he said, wishing that he hadn't been so rude to her at the gate and wondering how he could go about asking if he could join her – he'd already spoken to the folks at the check in, with the delayed flights he was looking at a thirteen hour wait and _another_ few hundred dollars for another flight out.

"It is," she agreed, her voice mild – dammit, she still wasn't looking at him.

"We could help each other out," he said, leaning back against the desk and folding his arms. "Split the cost and the driving -"

"Thank you, but I do not require your help," she said succinctly – okay, he wasn't going to lie to himself, even with her smug tone he was digging the accent. She slid the completed paperwork over the desk. "I am perfectly capable of both paying for and driving this car myself."

"Look, lady -" he started to say as she made her way to the sedan waiting on the curb, keys in hand. He cut himself off, realising his tone was too aggressive, and ran a hand through his neat hair. "It's a thirteen hour wait until the next flight and I've got a connection to catch in Chicago, help me out," he said genuinely.

She was standing beside the open drivers door, staring at him with those dark, prettily made-up eyes of hers. "...Please," he bit out gracelessly, shoving his hands in his trouser pockets.

She sighed gustily and shook her head exasperatedly. "Get in," she ordered brusquely and he breathed a sigh of relief.

Shoving his carry-on in the trunk, he climbed into the front seat (he wasn't going to push his luck by asking to drive) and did up his seat belt while she checked the mirrors, adjusted her seat and put her expensive looking phone into the cradle on the dashboard. He glanced at her again. "It's … Margaret, right?" he asked awkwardly, since that was the name the car had been reserved under.

"Peggy," she corrected without looking at him as she started the engine.

"Jack Thompson," he introduced in turn, his gaze flicking over her – his initial assessment that she was pretty was right, though there was a stern intractability about her that he found vaguely fascinating. She was wearing immaculate office wear that was all tight skirts, fitted blouses and high heels that she seemed to have no problem driving in.

There was a few minutes of silence as they pulled out of the airport parking lot and he wondered briefly if she knew where she was going – his question was answered as she spoke again. "JARVIS, plan a route to Chicago airport," she ordered smoothly, glancing in the rear-view mirror as she merged into traffic.

" _Calculating route, approximately eleven hours and twenty-two minutes until you reach your destination_ ," a British voice said from her phone, a map flashing up on the screen.

Jack raised his eyebrows. "The JARVIS model doesn't come out for two months," he said, impressed and wondering how she had gotten hold of it since apparently it was still in beta-trials.

"That's what you get for being friends with Howard Stark," she replied, her eyes on the road, and Jack instantly scowled, a crease appearing between his brows. He'd been in New York hunting one of the missing Stark inventions that was of interest to the SSR, and now one of Stark's friends had been dumped in his lap – that seemed a little too coincidental to him.

Pulling out his phone, he nonchalantly typed a quick message to Daniel Sousa as they drove.

 _Run clearance check on Margaret Carter, known associate of Howard Stark._

* * *

"JARVIS, run a search on Jack Thompson while I phone Dooley," Peggy said as she fuelled up the car. The man, Jack Thompson, was in the gas station buying coffee and a burger, scrolling though something on his phone while he waited. They had driven mostly in silence with him making the occasional comment on her music, which was playing from the phone. He had seemed to have no problem with Springsteen, Bon Jovi or Meatloaf, but when Taylor Swift had started playing he had pulled something of a bitch-fit.

Meanwhile, she took the time while he was inside to phone Dooley, the head of the SSR where she was meant to be interviewing tomorrow.

It was the first time she had spoken to the man in person, all their communication thus far being over email, and he sounded less than impressed when she told him that she had missed her flight due to a mission that she had taken in New York, warning him that she might need to push the interview back if she didn't make the connection.

"I hope you can appreciate that being late for a job interview doesn't cast you in the best light, Agent Carter," he told her over the phone in a dry, American accent.

"And I hope _you_ can appreciate that single-handedly recovering a dangerous piece of technology from a black market fence only adds to my resume," she retorted crisply, not giving details since many intelligence agencies had been sniffing around Howard since his inventions had gone missing.

Dooley sniffed. "... Noted," he said briskly down the phone, then hung up on her.

She shook her head. "JARVIS, did you find anything?" she wanted to know.

" _While the passport that Mr Thompson used in JFK appears to be genuine, the records surrounding it are encrypted_ ," JARVIS reported back to her.

Well _that_ was interesting, she thought, glancing up to look at where the man in question was just leaving the store. "Run decryption," she ordered as he approached.

" _It may take a while to -_ "

"Whenever is fine," she interrupted as Jack reached the car and handed her a Styrofoam cup of weak, milky tea.

"You Brit's take it with cream, right?" he said in a drawling voice as he walked around the car to the drivers side, wordlessly taking over the driving since they were nearly half way to Chicago.

"Thanks," she said, casting an overly warm smile at him, the first she had sent his way and making him do a slight double-take and send a half-smile back at her in turn.

She had initially been annoyed at having to chauffeur this rude, condescending man half way across the country, not entirely sure why she had agreed in the first place – but now, with encrypted files in his back ground, he had just become _much_ more interesting to her and she thought it was about time she got to know her new travelling companion.

* * *

 _She's pretty_ , had been Sousa's reply when he had sent back the files relating to Margaret 'Peggy' Carter. He had scrolled through them while he was in the gas-station, looking for anything incriminating. According to everything Sousa had rustled up, she was English born and bred, studied Political Science at a London University and now had a job at a phone company. There were several articles attached linking her to Howard Stark, most of them gossipy and speculating about who the mysterious brunette was, but one had a quote from Howard Stark himself, when someone had asked him about his relationship with her: 'Who, Peg? I've known her forever, we went to the same uni," the billionaire inventor had brushed off.

Possibly a dead end then.

Still, that didn't mean she wasn't bad company – especially now that she was actually talking to him.

The next several hours passed by reasonably pleasantly, with the two of them speaking as best two strangers could as the morning wore on into the afternoon. Jack was well used to censoring parts of his life from friends and dates as an SSR Agent, but he found it surprisingly easy to talk to her – maybe that had a little something to do with her coaxing smiles and the teasing way she had her legs crossed.

They were approaching Chicago when the traffic started to get bad – unusually bad for this time of day - and they lagged into silence. Jack glanced at his watch as he drove to check the time – less two hours until his connecting flight in Chicago.

"JARVIS, how long until our destination?" Peggy asked from beside him, evidently also thinking about the traffic.

 _"If the traffic remains at this pace, one hour and twelve minutes,"_ the disembodied British voice said from her phone. _"I patched into the Chicago police dispatch, there has been an accident ahead and the road will not be clear for some time."_

She sighed. "What time's your flight?" she asked him, a frown creasing her porcelain brow.

"Seven thirty-five," he replied bleakly, doubting that they would make it in time.

Peggy blinked at him. "LA?" she questioned, sounding surprised.

He glanced at her in turn. "Yeah," he confirmed, realising that she was after the same connection.

"Assuming that traffic doesn't get any worse, that will give us seventeen minutes to check in, get through security and get to the gate," she said crisply, then shook her head. "We're not going to make it."

"No, we're not," Jack agreed grimly – glancing into the rear-view mirror, he flicked on his turn signal and then did a spectacularly illegal U-turn in the middle of the road, ignoring the blaring horns behind him.

"Another airport?" she suggested as they sped off down the road in the opposite direction, looking at him carefully.

"Can't fucking well afford another flight," he admitted somewhat bitterly – damnnit, his bank account would have thanked him if he had just stayed in New York until the SSR plane could fly out, but he had been determined to be back for his grandmother birthday, which was the following evening. He glanced at her again. "When do you need to be in LA by?"

She took a breath. "I have a job interview, but he knows that I could be late due to this spectacular muck-up with flights," she admitted, tilting her head at him. "You?"

"Tomorrow evening, eight o'clock," he said quietly as he shifted up a gear – he shouldn't have promised his Gam-Gam, not when he'd known he might have to take a mission.

"JARVIS, how long is the drive to LA?" she asked the ridiculously intelligent system in her phone.

" _The record time from Chicago to Los Angeles currently stands at twenty-nine hours and thirty minutes,"_ the system replied. Jack glanced at his watch, working out that would get them into LA just after midnight, assuming that traffic was clear and nothing else decided to fuck up.

"Calculate route," Peggy ordered.

" _Quite so, Miss Carter,"_ the phone agreed with her. _"As Mr Stark would say, "records are made to be broken."_

* * *

"Have you finished decrypting those files?" Peggy asked as they stopped in a diner along the main highway some hours later – it was obvious that Jack hadn't wanted to stop, but both of them needed a bathroom break and it made sense to stock up on food so they wouldn't have to stop again.

" _Not yet, the decryption is tricky,"_ JARVIS admitted _. "Based on the level of coding, it is likely that Mr Thompson has affiliations with a high-profile organisation of some kind."_

"Interesting," Peggy said speculatively, looking over at him once more – he was waiting in line and tapping his fingers agitatedly on his thigh.

Her companion was becoming more and more intriguing the longer she travelled with him, determined to find out what secrets he was hiding. He'd told her he wanted to be back in LA for his grandmother's birthday and she didn't believe that for a single moment. She wasn't overly concerned about travelling alone with him, she was perfectly able to handle herself and had been on missions far more dangerous.

The barista, a pretty Italian girl whose name-tag read Angie, returned with the drinks she had ordered for them both. "You could eat him up with a spoon," she said, following Peggy's eyes to where Jack was standing. "Is he yours?"

"Hmm?" Peggy said, turning her gaze back to the woman.

"The guy in the sexy suspenders over there," Angie said, nodding her head towards him. "Nice suit, nice car, nice shoulders."

"The car is mine – well, actually it's a rental," Peggy clarified, then shrugged her shoulders slightly. "And he isn't mine either, be my guest if you wanted to make a move."

The girl shook her head. "Looks like you guys are just passing through anyway," she replied, handing the drinks over and smiling at her. "Anything else, English?"

"No, that will be all," she replied with a smile, handing over Howard's credit card to pay for it all – she still blamed him for the whole situation and was not adverse to using his money.

* * *

It was nearly three in the afternoon and they were driving along a long, deserted stretch of highway, having driven through the night, when sirens appeared behind them, making Jack frown and twist in his seat.

Peggy was driving and she glanced into the rear-view mirror at the flashing red and blue. "Well that's interesting," she said musingly, not sounding particularly disturbed. "JARVIS?"

" _Colorado dispatch shows no State Troops in this area,_ " the voice said smoothly – and, goddammit, if those weren't the police then who the hell was trying to get them to pull over on a deserted stretch of road?

" _Bugger_ … Howard's card," she said under her breath, shaking her head slightly, then glanced at Jack. "Sorry, looks like you're involved," she said cryptically.

"Who are you?" he demanded suddenly, realising that this must have something to do with the missing Stark inventions and reaching for his gun, which was discretely holstered by his ankle.

She gave him a cool look as she signalled to pull over, her quick eyes noticing his movement towards his weapon. "I could ask you the same thing," she replied as she bought the car to a stop.

He didn't get a chance to ask again since the two State Troopers – if that's who it really was, which he was doubting – was approaching her window.

She rolled it down and smiled sunnily at them. "Hello officers," she said in a flawlessly faked American accent. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Is this your car, ma'am?" the man asked, his hand obviously on his weapon and seeming slightly thrown by her innocent demeanour.

"No, it's a rental," she gushed, and the two men glanced at each other.

"Step out of the car, ma'am," the second man ordered – Jack kept his tight grip on his gun, hidden from them men's view by his leg, as she got out of the car.

She had scarcely closed her door when her fist went flying into the face of one man and spinning to plant a kick in the stomach of the second – Jack was out of the car in seconds, but it was still plenty of time to have both of the men unconscious and sprawled on the road.

"Who the _fuck_ are you?" he demanded again, walking around the front of the car and keeping her covered with his gun.

Peggy tossed her hair back and glanced though her open window. "JARVIS, have you finished decrypting those files?" she asked nonsensically, seemingly uncaring that he had her at gunpoint.

" _It was a challenge, but yes,"_ the British voice said from her phone. _"Mr Thompson is an Agent at the Strategic Scientific Reserve, based in the Los Angeles branch. He served as a Marine for -"_

The voice cut off as Jack sent a single bullet straight through the screen of her phone before swiftly turning the gun back to her. "Now I'm gonna ask you one more time ..." he said slowly, pointing his gun between her eyes. "Who are you, Peggy?"

"That was rude," she chided, frowning slightly at the loss of her phone before turning her gaze back to him, flicking her dark eyes over him once. "SSR … Did I pass?" she asked curiously.

"What?" he asked, not knowing what she was talking about.

"Well, I assume that this was a test," she said calmly, looking at him with her head tilted to one side. "Did I pass?"

He clicked the safety off his gun. "You've got exactly ten seconds to start making sense," he warned her bitterly, meaning it.

She sighed faintly. "Not a test, then," she muttered – then her hand was slamming into his elbow, knocking his gun aside as she shifted his centre of gravity against him, sending him sprawling on the floor. Before he could even register what was happening, he was flat on his back on the road beside the unconscious goons, with her straddling his chest to pin him down.

She had something in her hand, which she was holding out to show him – it was a badge.

"Agent Carter, MI6," she told him plainly, making him gape slightly at her. "I've applied for a transfer to the SSR, I have an interview with Rodger Dooley tomorrow."

He was staring up at her in shock – partly due to her words, partly due to the fact that she was straddling his chest with her skirt hiked up around her thighs and his own gun pointing down at him. "... Well, fuck me," was all he found himself able to say – which, in hindsight, wasn't the best start to his working relationship with his new partner.

* * *

 **Not as edited as some of my stuff so there may be mistakes - just written for a bit of fun, really :)**

 **Leave a review though, my lovelies :)**


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